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Priya Nair

Your mobile phone can double up as a credit card at the shopping mall. Here's how.

YOU may have seen and even used a watch-cum-calculator. You have probably also seen a radio-cum-clock. These objects, while novel, don't really serve a larger purpose.

But how about a mobile-cum-credit card? Taking convergence a step further, Standard Chartered Bank, in association with Visa, has launched a mobile credit card, m-Wallet.

The technology enables customers, who have the Manhattan card, to make payments using their mobile phones. The pilot project has been launched among select Manhattan customers in Bangalore and Mumbai.

Customers need to download and install a Java application, which is available free of cost, using GPRS on their mobile phone.

After installation of the application software on the mobile, the user needs to download his virtual Manhattan card on to his mobile to get started.

After this one-time installation of software and downloading of the card, the customer can make payments by beaming his card details to the card acceptance machine at the payment counter, using the infrared mode from his mobile phone. The card need not be swiped for completing the payment.

Says Murali Natarajan, Head-Consumer Banking, Standard Chartered Bank India, "To begin with, we will give this facility to about 1,000 Manhattan card uses in Mumbai and Bangalore. Once these customers are comfortable with it, we will expand it to more customers and to those using other credit cards as well."

"At the merchants' end, a special adapter will be fitted to the swipe machine, which can recognise the card details beamed by the customer. That is why we have selected only a few outlets and are doing intensive expansion work at these outlets," he says.

The existing POS (point-of-sale) machines can be adapted for proximity transactions using an IR adapter, which fits to the magnetic stripe slot on the POS machine. The adapter converts the IR beam into a series of magnetic pulses, which replicates the swipe of the card through the slot.

The working is similar to a gun, which reads the bar code on a packaged article using infrared rays. The point-of-sales machine will only detect the number of the card and by virtue of proximity for infrared to work, cards in the immediate vicinity cannot be detected by default. This is unlike Bluetooth technology, which can detect all the Bluetooth users in the area.

Natarajan says, "Customers need not worry about losing the card or its getting stolen. Even if the phone gets stolen, nobody will be able to use the credit card. It is safe as there is a unique Personal Identification Number, which the user will have to use for each transaction."

To use m-Wallet, the customer needs to enter the PIN each time he uses it for a retail transaction. Hence this virtual card cannot be used by anyone else unless this PIN has been shared with the other person by the cardholder.

"The only disadvantage is that customers will need a GPRS-enabled mobile handset. But as most mobile models are GPRS-enabled now, even this is not a hurdle."

The m-Wallet technology has been developed by Tata Consultancy Services and C-SAM Inc, which provides payment solution software to the banking and financial sector.

Standard Chartered launched the Manhattan card in September 2004. It has no annual fee and allows the cardholder to customise the card to suit his/her lifestyle. The card offers packages in restaurants, theatres, health clubs, or travelling packages as per the cardholders' interests.

The Bank chose the Manhattan cardholder for the m-Wallet pilot project because the profile of the Manhattan cardholder fits that of the m-Wallet user. Both are life-style cards and both are for people on the move, says Natarajan.

Picture by Shaju John

priyan@thehindu.co.in

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